Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator captured it very well with regard to where Ireland has been through its history in terms of welcoming the discussion on enlargement. We had the Presidency back in 2004 when we had the day of welcomes and ten member states were brought into the European Union. We have a solid track record working with those countries that are aspiring to get into Europe. Some of them can have a deficit in their administration capacity to deliver a lot of the reforms that are needed to become members of the European Union, to fill in and get through all of the acquis and work through the trajectory of membership. We financially support those countries, which is very important, to give them the chance that we have had and that transformed our country over the last 50 years. We will continue to do that.

Obviously scale can scare people given the size of Ukraine but we have had the United Kingdom, with 67 million people, leave the European Union. Once there is a will to try to work around how to reform institutions and absorb new countries coming in, we will continue to be that voice to work and support it. We need to ensure the European Union is the competent voice throughout Europe, that our member states are at one as best we can be and that other voices from other regions that can be more destabilising do not infiltrate because of us potentially taking our eye off the ball. We have to be very careful about that. We see that renewed urgency approaching now. A lot will depend on the Commission's forensic report, which is due in November, about how countries are getting on. That will probably give a better timescale of where we are. We are just waiting on it to publish that in November and that will go through a number of the countries. Obviously Ukraine will be key in that.

On the multi-annual financial framework, there are a number of pressures coming on the budget. In 2022, Ireland put in about €2.6 billion so we have moved from a position of receiving money to being a net contributor. A number of aspects in the budget have come under pressure, such as interest repayments, REPowerEU, green energy and the transition we are trying to embark upon. Administration within the Commission has also grown. Front and centre is Ukraine and the need for additional support, which we see as a special case. Our view as a Government is that if we increase funding, it is going to cost more for us as a State. Not only that but we are focused on trying to exhaust the current provisions of the budget because it took a long time to negotiate the current multi-annual financial framework and we do not want to go back into a major negotiating process when we have various lines that have not been exhausted yet.

I referenced earlier the RRF loans of around €93 billion. A number of other areas like the Single Market instrument and the flexibility instrument have additional capacity within them, rather than going back to the negotiating table. We are trying to ensure that happens.